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Rachel Bronson described the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia as tense and under threat. She attributed this to many factors, including the fact that Saudi Arabia has one-forth of the world's oil resources, which the US heavily depends upon for its energy needs. The US recognizes that Saudi Arabia’s status as a swing producer of oil is even more important than Saudi Arabia's absolute oil holdings.

She explained that Saudi Arabia serves as the central bank of oil, with 85% of the world's spare capacity, and the US depends on its ability to control prices when the instability of other oil-producing countries, such as Venezuela and Nigeria, and natural disasters threaten US access to oil. Saudi Arabia can afford to put an extra one billion barrels of oil a day on the market, as was the case after Hurricane Katrina, to help control prices and assist the American economy.

The United States returns this favor by extending a protective military shield over Saudi Arabia, defending it against threats to its territorial integrity in the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein. The US also provides the Saudis reassurance that it will not tolerate WMD capabilities of the other major power in the region, Iran. However, US military support of Saudi Arabia has limits. US restrictions on what arms can be sold to Saudi Arabia, for example, are a product of the distrust that underlies the alliance.

What, then, explains the durability of America's uneasy alliance with Saudi Arabia if the US has been able to bear hard relations with other oil-producing states such as Libya, Iran, Sudan, and Venezuela? Bronson answered that friendship with Saudi Arabia gives the US the flexibility to deal punitively with other oil-rich states. She also argued that there are also deeper, ideological reasons sustaining the US-Saudi partnership that were never aspects of America's relationship with other oil-producing states.

According to Bronson, America's favorable ties with Saudi Arabia are based on three components: oil, God, and real estate. However, oil was never the most important aspect of the Saudi and American alliance. Bronson argued that the Cold War provided an ideological, unifying bond between the two states; the bond centered on "God" rather than oil. The US viewed Saudi Arabia as a strategic ally against the Soviet Union because it believed Saudi religiosity could help fight "godless" communism. Bronson contended that the Saudi perspective derived from a genuine belief that the spread of Communism in the Arab world was antithetical to their interests.

Given Saudi Arabia's prominence in the Muslim world as the place of the two holiest sites in Islam, the US hoped that it could fashion Saudi Arabia's King Fahd as an "Islamic Pope" to counterbalance the growing regional power of Egyptian president and perceived Soviet ally Gamal Abdel Nasser. Saudi Arabia favored an alliance with the US since America could enhance the Saudis' ability to contend for regional power.

1979 created common geopolitical concerns for the two countries and brought them closer together. That year marked the Iranian Revolution led by religious cleric Ayatollah Khomeini, the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Islamic militants, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. While these events challenged the Saudi monarchy's regional power and Islamic authority, the US was antagonized by the Iranian Revolution's anti-American message and troubled by Soviet expansionism.

The US overlooked Saudi Arabia's increasingly rigid interpretations of Islam domestically, including the segregation and veiling of women, since it appreciated Saudi Arabia's support in fighting the Soviets and countering Ayatollah Khomeini's rising power. Saudi Arabia recognized that fighting the Soviets in the predominantly Muslim country of Afghanistan and opposing the emergence of a Shiite political ideology in Iran were opportunities to prove its Islamic credentials.

During the 1980s, Saudi Arabia sent billions of dollars, military hardware, humanitarian aid, and, critically, a large number of young Saudis, imbibed with radical, Wahhabi Islam to support the jihadist fight against the Soviets. Bronson remarked that the US considered Saudi religious influence benign since it was operating in a Cold War paradigm. In this ideological framework, fighting the Soviets was more important than the long-term effects of arming and radicalizing a group of ragtag fighters in Afghanistan.

Bronson argued that the America's strategy of using the Saudi religiosity as an asset to fight the Soviets contributed significantly to the rise of Islamic extremism. She explained that, wherever Saudi money went in the region, its religious proselytizing followed. The Saudis used the excess profits from the spike in oil prices in 1979 to set up Islamic banks to fund local Islamist groups and support madrasas that taught the Wahabists' austere, intolerant and xenophobic brand of Islam.

With the end of the Cold War, Bronson indicated there is no longer a grand, strategic rationale to bind the American-Saudi alliance. With the emergence of Islamic terrorism and Bush's espousal of democracy promotion, America's relationship with the Saudi monarchy has grown very complicated. After the revelation that 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were Saudi citizens, the US has been working on rebuilding its alliance with Saudi Arabia in a way that promotes US interests in the War on Terrorism.

Looking toward the future, Bronson argued that oil is not enough to secure the alliance between the US and Saudi Arabia in the 21st century. The rise of other geopolitical players in the region such as China and the looming energy crisis threaten oil as a pillar of the US-Saudi partnership. China is now one of the largest importers of Gulf oil, and this threatens America's leverage in the region. For the time being, Bronson indicated that Iran's nuclear program is a basis for continued US-Saudi cooperation.